


The Unforgiven

by CandyCanine



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Angst, Description of Tortute, Dominance, Gen, Heavy Angst, Humiliation, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:20:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28978041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CandyCanine/pseuds/CandyCanine
Summary: After Hoover Dam, the Courier manages to take Vulpes hostage and decides to feed him some of the Legion’s medicine. She makes him her slave, displaying a cruelty that no one would have believed her capable of.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	The Unforgiven

**Author's Note:**

> [The Unforgiven](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zFYxEINsdY&feature=related) by Apocalyptica

Boone felt he should known that there was something wrong about the courier. Something that had been caused by being shot in the head, or maybe that had been there the whole time. Something that had set off a process of crumbling mental barriers culminating with this... the sight he was being presented with.

He should have suspected something when she had sent him away to chase remnant legion troops after they had won the battle of Hoover Dam. But whatever he might have suspected, it wasn’t this. 

“I thought you despised slavery.”

She looked at the man sitting beside her on the ground, leisurely, one leg folded under him, the other knee drawn up with his arms slung around it. He was wearing black leather trousers and a leather collar around his neck and nothing else, leaving Boone in no doubt as to what kind of tortures had been inflicted upon him. It left him wondering, however, what else she must have done to him that hadn’t left visible scars.

The courier patted the head of the man beside her and chuckled. “He’s not my slave.” And to the man, she added: “Or are you?”  
He looked up at her, although he avoided her eyes. “I know my place.”  
“See?” She laughed, in what almost sounded like childish delight. “I just fed him some of his own medicine, Craig.”

Boone looked at the sitting man again and felt a bitter taste rise up in his throat. True, he hated the legion. True, in his eyes the bastards deserved every hell coming for them. Or so he had thought. But this...  
“What did you do to him? Torture him? I thought you despised that, too.”

She shrugged again. “And I thought you would see the justice in this.”  
It was Boone’s turn to shrug now, but more out of being so uncomfortable with Vulpes Inculta crouching at the courier’s feet like a dog. “Should’ve killed him clean.”  
“Well... I honestly expected you’d think such a fate too good for him.” The courier laughed again and crossed her arms. “And here I had such a hard time getting him to cooperate.”

Boone cast a look at the sitting man again and started feeling a little sick.

“I mean”, the courier went on conversationally. “Simple torture didn’t get me far. Inflicting pain upon a man such as him is like trying to irradiate a super mutant. These legion guys have been made capable to stand a lot of it, after all.”

Boone swallowed the bile rising in his throat and refused to take the bait. The courier however went on, unabashed. As if she felt the need to brag about her achievement.

“So the key was to break his resolve. Hunger and thirst to weaken him. Then I had the idea about the jet. Jet withdrawal is supposed to be a hell in itself.”  
Boone barely suppressed a shudder.  
“I didn’t think you were so squeamish, Boone.”  
“I’m not squeamish. Torture is wrong.”  
“What?” She laughed again. “Even for a man like him?” She looked at the man beside her and smiled affectionately down at him. “He knows perfectly well why he has been punished so hard. What his sins were. Don’t you?”  
“Yes.”

Bone felt sicker than ever before.

“You see”, the courier continued, lighting up a cigarette. “When he was weakened enough by thirst and jet withdrawal I used a Hydra treatment. That did it in the end.”  
“What?”, Boone asked, despite himself. It was a bit like watching a horrible accident, he was appalled but unable to look away.   
“I tell you, it wasn’t easy, badgering all that Hydra out of the Followers, but it’s been well worth it. The key is them not knowing how many doses of Hydra you’ve got.”  
“I don’t want to hear it.”

The courier laughed again and Boone tried to remember when it was that things had gone wrong with her. It might have been the little slave girl in the camp. It might have been his own story. It might even have been that she had never needed any incentive to go mad... having been brain damaged to begin with. 

“The eyes first”, the courier now said, as casually as if she was gossiping about cooking skills. “Gauge out his eyes, and then give him some Hydra to undo the damage. Not pleasant. Not pleasant at all, wasn’t it?”  
“No.”  
“But you deserved it, didn’t you?”  
“Yes.”

“In the end it was the second time I was about to cut off his privates that did it. When they first start to beg you to stop, you can make them do anything you want. It’s important though that you keep telling them that they deserve everything coming for them. In the end, when you stop, you seem like their saviour and they do anything you want completely willingly.”  
Boone involuntarily took a step back. “You’re a monster.”  
“What?” Her head snapped around. “You think I’m mad, don’t you?” She shook her head. “And here I thought you’d be the first to rub your hands in glee at the sight of a legion bastard being put in his place.”  
“I kill them.” Boone took a deep breath to steady himself. “I kill them, I don’t torture them.”  
“And you think men like him who did things like these to other men and woman on a regular basis don’t deserve a dose of their own medicine?”  
“No. We talk about being better. We gotta be better. If we resort t their methods, how are we better?”  
“It’s only to show them their place! To make them see what they’ve done to others!”  
Boone shook his head. “You’re a torturer and a slaver.” With that, he left her, left the Casino again, but he knew that the sight of the broken man crouching at the Courier’s feet would haunt him for the rest of his life.

He only made it as far as the Wrangler before he realised that this was Bitter Springs all over again. Back then, he shouldn’t have pulled the trigger.  
This time... this time, though, he should have. And he hadn’t done it.

That night he went back to the Strip, watching the Lucky 38 until he saw the courier leave. He went back in, back up in the elevator, and he found the man sitting on the floor, being chained to her bed, toying idly with the chain that bound him. He didn’t even look up as Boone entered.

“You”, Boone said.

At that, he looked up, and for the first time, Boone met his eyes. A cold shudder crept down his spine when he did so, because he realised that he knew. The courier had left him with just enough mind to realise what had been done to him and what was happening to him but not enough to do something about it. And without another word, Boone pulled out a silenced pistol and pointed it right between Inculta’s eyes.

The chained man looked up at him and with a silent tear of gratitude trickling down his cheek closed his eyes. Boone took one deep breath and pulled the trigger.


End file.
